Tankefugl's Blink Mod!

[tankefugl (in a tent)]

Cloned from http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=80656. I'm keeping this posted to the consties forum and some other smaller forums like this one because of bandwidth for the download.

... so it came to be that tankefugl became a bit tired of the leap-ish blink the fade had. I always envisioned the blink like a teleporting ability, but hopefully more usable than the stuck-ish blink from 1.04.

Friday, I downloaded the HL SDK with one goal set: To make a mod with a cooler blink. Today, I present you the tankefugl's blink mod.

Download it, uncompress it into the half-life folder. It will create a folder named "tankefugl". That's the mod. I used a random HLDM map I found laying around that doesn't rely on any sprites and such, and I also used two of the metabolize sounds from NS. I hope noone mind that I included them in the compressed file.

To test it, create a server with the map included. Bind any button to +blink, and play around. Hold down the +blink button to blink. When you do so, you will turn invisible and zoom in great speed in the direction you look (FOV increased, giving you an even increased feeling of WOAHGOINGFAST!). When you release the +blink button, you reappear again making the illusion of teleporting from A to B.

You also cannot fire. (The firing animation will still play, but you will do no damage or use any ammo.) I intend to make you invincible too when blinking, and to make you noclip vs. entities so you cannot pick up stuff or crash into people. However, this is just a proof-of-concept, so I doubt I will use much time to perfect it.

The file is located here (1mb only): http://mirror.playzen.net/halflife/modific...nkefugl-mod.rar

We had a go at this today, playing 5-6 player HLDM with massive blinking. (As the blinking doesn't require any energy yet, you can do it a lot ...)

I'd be happy to give away the sourcecode or help out implementing this into NS somehow, if you ever would decide that this is indeed a cool thing.

Happy blinking!

(Btw, HL SDK is fun to play with.)

[Necrosis]

HAXORZ!! JOO THEIFZ FLAYRA'S SOUNDAGE!!!


Looks interesting, will have to download sometime when I'm not spamming turbolaser in GC.

Any piccies for us?

[SwiftSpear]

A blink like this has been dicsussed at length on the NS discussions forum and the general consensus is that it was too over powered because it made the fade able to ninja (due to its invisability) in and out of combat so seemlessly that it would be impossible to kill by all but the luckiest of marine teams.   My simple solution?  force a charge time before the ability acctually begins working, but of course no one pays attention to my simple solutions (plus it kinda goes against the termology 'blink')

[Legionnaired]

Of course, you could just make the fade have the armor of a wet paper bag, so that it dies in ~40 LMG bullets, and not even a whole shotgun shell.

Sure, it dies easy, but so do the marines it stalks silently.

[E-Fonzarelli]

Back in the old days, the fade's blink, was very buggy, but did this whole teleportation thing...

anyone else remember that?

[EmperorPenguin]

Yeah.  It was closer to the orginal concept I guess, but the new one seems to work better/is less buggy.

[Slink]

you know what i'd like to see for the fade's blink?  i'd like to make it a blur effect, and give it  some semi-transparency.  definetly not full invisibility, maybe something like 40-60%, with the same sort of gradual in and out effect that the current cloaking has.  To me, this gives the fade much more of an atmosphere around the class, and more atmosphere is GOOD.

Let me clarify a few things.  I don't know a whole lot about coding, and even less about the half-life engine.  so i'm not really sure if this is possible, but by blur effect, i'm thinking simply making several of the same model without hitboxes, offset from the real model.  More complex would be to get a different model, and have it switch to that when you blink, but that soundsmuch more difficult to me.

i suppose an optional feature would be to throw in some physics reality here.  if a fade is truly invisible, then realistically, it cannon see.  That's because for it to be invisible, photons must be able to pass completely through it.  sooo, that means no photons can hit it's eyes, making a fade blind while it blinks.  Now, if you make it blurred, and semi-transparent, then you wouldn't have complete blindness, just less light hitting the eyes, so the effect would be darker than normal vision, and probably some blurring.  However, if you ask me, the whole "blindness while blinking" suffers from too much realism to be healthy for gameplay.

just my $0.25, feedback positive or negative is welcome.

[tankefugl (in a tent)]

Feedback is good, thanks!

I'm working on moving the consties thread (where I will include all sane suggestions I get to this) out in the "open". I will, however, need a host for my 1mb file. My bandwidth is running out. If anyone can help me out, I'd really appreciate it.

[SwiftSpear]

I can ask [WHO]Them if I'm allowed to host it... how many DLs would you be expecting?

I was thinking about this more and more ever since you started talking about it, specificly thinking about a way to balance an invisable blink for NS, here are my thoughts...

Well obviously, and initial response time as instant as the current blink would be unfair constidering that it would not be removing any disadvantages in any way, but would be adding a major advantage (no clip invincible/invisable fades) so I logically reasoned that there could be implimented a delay time before the ability acctually activated on press, but then I thought to myself that doing it that way would kind of wreck the hit and run viability of the fades, expecially in large games.  Sure the first hit would be alot easyer to hit when no one can see you approching, but how are you supposed to get out of say marine start with tonnes of fire concentrated on you, and no ability to escape by any means insantaniously.  In thinking about it more, I reasoned that perhaps blink could work like a sling shot... the farther you pull back, the farther you blink, or in this case, the longer you hold down the mouse key the longer you remain in blink state.  Of course there is no reason to force players who have held the key down for 20 seconds to remain blinking constantly for 20 seconds, so we would just make any action during blink state act as an interupt.  The major crutch in this line of reasoning I could see was, what would prevent a fade from just tapping the mouse key repeditively for a 3.0 style blink escape?  This issue I figured would have to be dealt with using strict energy costs... for instance, every use of blink instantly uses half your maximum energy, but as a trade off, you regain energy normally while in blink state, so there is an up side to using and planning the use of long blink times.  The blink outlined by my plans I think would feel much more like the blink described in the NS manual, and still have similar game ramifications as the current blink...

[Satiagraha]

Well obviously, and initial response time as instant as the current blink would be unfair constidering that it would not be removing any disadvantages in any way, but would be adding a major advantage (no clip invincible/invisable fades) so I logically reasoned that there could be implimented a delay time before the ability acctually activated on press, but then I thought to myself that doing it that way would kind of wreck the hit and run viability of the fades, expecially in large games.  Sure the first hit would be alot easyer to hit when no one can see you approching, but how are you supposed to get out of say marine start with tonnes of fire concentrated on you, and no ability to escape by any means insantaniously.  In thinking about it more, I reasoned that perhaps blink could work like a sling shot... the farther you pull back, the farther you blink, or in this case, the longer you hold down the mouse key the longer you remain in blink state.  Of course there is no reason to force players who have held the key down for 20 seconds to remain blinking constantly for 20 seconds, so we would just make any action during blink state act as an interupt.  The major crutch in this line of reasoning I could see was, what would prevent a fade from just tapping the mouse key repeditively for a 3.0 style blink escape?  This issue I figured would have to be dealt with using strict energy costs... for instance, every use of blink instantly uses half your maximum energy, but as a trade off, you regain energy normally while in blink state, so there is an up side to using and planning the use of long blink times.  The blink outlined by my plans I think would feel much more like the blink described in the NS manual, and still have similar game ramifications as the current blink...

[snapback]29000[/snapback]

I like the idea, but wouldn't a max charge be better? Charge up to a limit where it just stays if you hold longer. This could easily be accompanied with a sort of charge up sound, like the gauss gun in HLDM. It becomes higher and higher in pitch until it hits a ceiling and then it holds pitch. Of course the blink charge doesn't have to increase in pitch, but it'd be a continuously changing sound that stabalizes when fully charged.

[SwiftSpear]

I like the idea, but wouldn't a max charge be better? Charge up to a limit where it just stays if you hold longer. This could easily be accompanied with a sort of charge up sound, like the gauss gun in HLDM. It becomes higher and higher in pitch until it hits a ceiling and then it holds pitch. Of course the blink charge doesn't have to increase in pitch, but it'd be a continuously changing sound that stabalizes when fully charged.

[snapback]29004[/snapback]

I thougt about a max charge, and it made just as much sence to me, as long as the player still has the ability to interupt in mid blink.  A maximum value would probably be nessicary anyways to prevent variable overflow's which could potentially crash your average server.  I just didn't bother mentioning it since I assumed there would be a good chance it would be a logically assumed feature in development if it is nessicary.

[tankefugl (in a tent)]

I've gotten a host for the file, but thanks for the offer.

On how to balance it, I've received quite a lot of ideas ... Check out the first post in http://www.natural-selection.org/forums/in...showtopic=80722  for a list of things I'll try out. I'm 100% sure this can be done in a balanced fassion

[Satiagraha]

You know what's funny? I still don't have an account to the NS Forums :p


Tank:
 I noticed a post on the NS forums about initial and final velocity. Apparently, when you come out of a blink, you stop dead. In true teleportation, you appear at the destination with the same velocity as before you teleported. For examply, you're falling out of an airplane and 50 ft down, you teleport to the ground. Congratulations, you now have broken legs.
 My suggestion is to see if you can implement this concept into your blink, the return to your initial velocity. For testing this out in your own mod, I'd recommend removing worldspawn damage like the current fade.

[BobTheJanitor]

I noticed a post on the NS forums about initial and final velocity. Apparently, when you come out of a blink, you stop dead. In true teleportation, you appear at the destination with the same velocity as before you teleported. For examply, you're falling out of an airplane and 50 ft down, you teleport to the ground. Congratulations, you now have broken legs.
 My suggestion is to see if you can implement this concept into your blink, the return to your initial velocity. For testing this out in your own mod, I'd recommend removing worldspawn damage like the current fade.

That might be confusing in the extreme though. If you want to be technical, velocity includes movement and direction. So you start out running north, go into blink, turn twice to the right, come up behind a marine facing south, come out of blink, and go flying backwards. :blink:

[Satiagraha]

That might be confusing in the extreme though. If you want to be technical, velocity includes movement and direction. So you start out running north, go into blink, turn twice to the right, come up behind a marine facing south, come out of blink, and go flying backwards. :blink:

[snapback]29091[/snapback]

Yes, that is why I was saying velocity instead of speed. But then again, I always invisioned Blink as a straight shot anyways.

[-Lancer-]

That might be confusing in the extreme though. If you want to be technical, velocity includes movement and direction. So you start out running north, go into blink, turn twice to the right, come up behind a marine facing south, come out of blink, and go flying backwards. :blink:

[snapback]29091[/snapback]

Yes, that is why I was saying velocity instead of speed. But then again, I always invisioned Blink as a straight shot anyways.

[snapback]29096[/snapback]

I dont see why you should have the ability to turn when blinking, we never did before.
If you were to blink in the way mentionned above, you should only be able to do so in a straight line. and the only freedom you would have to turn would be on your own axis.

[That Annoying Kid]

back in 1.xx blink was a straight shot, and I liked it as it was

[edit]
blinking behind marines was fun, becuase you would actually disapear, appear behind them, attack, and then be gone in a purple haze after attacking. If you BLINKED you missed it hafhafhaf
[/edit]

[Satiagraha]

The only real reason why we can turn with the current blink is the same reason we can bunny hop, Air Control. It's a flaw in the physics engine that when you turn/strafe whatever in mid air while moving, you gain speed in a new direction. Thus you can turn and direct your motion in a new direction midflight. Bunny hopping is just turning a bit so you get that turning speed boost and then turning back, so your average direction is straight forward, but you get speed bonuses from turning. The old 1.xx blink kept pushing you in the straight path, therefore not allowing you to turn.

[tankefugl (in a tent)]

The current blink doesn't rely on air acceleration (as bhop and curved leaps does) for controll. It simply propells the fade in the direction it looks, applying any friction that may apply.

The difference between all previous blinks and the blink I propose is that this blink is supposed to be a controllable teleport; make it usable yet cool. You disappear, and reapper somewhere else -- behind the marine.

By the way, check out the thread on the NS forums -- it's updated with bugfixes, smooth field of view and motionblur. It looks quite cool now  

[Satiagraha]

This may sound a bit cheesy, but I think the blink should be somewhat modeled after the "quick attack" of Pokemon. It's kind of hard to describe,